Legal battle lays out when copycats go too far.

Besides handling the rights and distribution for every official version of Tetris, The Tetris Company is also responsible for protecting the Tetris brand from unlicensed knock-offs. In the recent past, it's done this by forcing platform holders like Apple to removeunofficial copies of the game from the iOS App Store as soon as they pop up, for instance.

But the company went a little further in the case of iPhone Tetris clone Mino, taking developer Xio Interactive to court to protect the Tetris copyright. A New Jersey circuit court judge recently ruled in favor of The Tetris Company in that case, issuing a ruling that highlights the legal challenges in determining what separates a hackneyed clone from a game that is merely "inspired" by an existing title.

What makes Tetris Tetris?

While game designers usually have a pretty easy time telling when their game design has been ripped off by a clone, proving actual copyright infringement in court is usually an uphill battle. That's because copyright law doesn't actually protect the basic idea and underlying rules of a game, which need a duly filed and approved patent to be locked down. The copyright on a game only protects the "expression" of those rules, which usually covers things like character art, music and sound effects. That makes it relatively easy for a clone to mimic the successful engine of a game while making just enough changes on the surface to avoid a successful legal challenge.

In defending Mino, lawyers for Xio Interactive didn't deny that they were heavily influenced by Tetris, copying almost all of the game's basic elements wholesale. The defense's main argument, instead, was that the things it copied—everything from the shape and color of the blocks and the way that they rotate to the dimensions of the playfield—were actually integral to the underlying rules of the game, and therefore not subject to copyright protection. The argument, basically, was that Tetris is so simple and abstract that every part of the game is a basic "rule" that can be legally copied.

To address this argument, the judge in the case was placed in the interesting position of having to come up with a definition of what, exactly, defines a Tetris game at its most basic level. The definition he came up with reads like a patent application that's trying to cover as broad a range of games as possible:

Tetris is a puzzle game where a user manipulates pieces composed of square blocks, each made into a different geometric shape, that fall from the top of the game board to the bottom where the pieces accumulate. The user is given a new piece after the current one reaches the bottom of the available game space. While a piece is falling, the user rotates it in order to fit it in with the accumulated pieces. The object of the puzzle is to fill all spaces along a horizontal line. If that is accomplished, the line is erased, points are earned, and more of the game board is available for play. But if the pieces accumulate and reach the top of the screen, then the game is over. These then are the general, abstract ideas underlying Tetris and cannot be protected by copyright nor can expressive elements that are inseparable from them.

Under this definition, games that simply share Tetris penchant for falling, rotating blocks could not be subject to a copyright claim—the finding specifically cites Dr. Mario, for instance, as a similar game that is not infringing. But by keeping the basic, high-level definition of Tetris so broad, the judge also granted full copyright protection to a lot of pretty basic elements of the Tetris experience, explicitly including:

The dimensions of the playing field [20 squares high by ten squares wide].

The display of "garbage" lines [the random junk that can optionally appear at the start of a game].

The appearance of "ghost" or shadow pieces [which highlight where a piece is going to land].

The display of the next piece to fall.

The change in color of the pieces when they lock with the accumulated pieces.

The appearance of squares automatically filling in the game board when the game is over.

A video demonstration of Mino's very Tetris-like gameplay.

The judge is careful to note that any of these features, when viewed in isolation, might not be enough to prove copyright infringement—not every game with a "next piece" function is automatically a legally suspect Tetris clone. That said, in the case of Mino, the judge found that the game's co-opting of all of these elements and more amounted to "wholesale copying" that served no development purpose "other than to avoid the difficult task of developing its own take on a known idea" (it's important to note that this ruling came despite the fact that Mino adds features like new power-ups and modes to the basic Tetris gameplay).

What does it mean?

While a legal definition of what makes a Tetris game is interesting in its own right (and very useful to The Tetris Company), the wider meaning of the case in other game cloning debates is still open to interpretation. Some think the ruling may lead to more serious enforcement of copyright protection for games in general.

"While the case for infringement was made easier by Xio's flagrant and wholesale copying, the legal standard applied by the court, addressing the overall look and feel of the game, may presage more robust copyright protection for video games," Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers attorney Jack Schecter writes in a recent newsletter. By defining the "idea" of Tetris at such a high level (as "games with falling, rotatable blocks that disappear when arranged in lines"), Schechter notes that the judge basically ensured that the court would be able to identify many lower-level details that made Tetris protectable. The real battle in these kinds of cases will now mainly be "over the appropriate level of abstraction of the game mechanics and gameplay," he writes.

But Mark Methenitis says while the decision is "fascinating," he thinks it "may not give other social [and casual] game developers nearly the ammunition they think." Even though the judge granted copyright protection to a lot of relatively basic elements of the Tetris experience, Mino still could have gotten around the copyright protections with some relatively simple changes. "If all of their shapes were five blocks, and the grid had different dimensions, and the blocks weren't practically identically styled, I'm not sure we get to an infringement finding," Methenitis told Ars Technica. He also notes that while Mino and Tetris were almost impossible to tell apart in side by side videos and screenshots, most clones are at least visually distinct enough that you can "tell they're not the same game" by looking at them, making it harder to prove infringement.

Tetris is also somewhat unique, Methenitis says, because it has an established history and general brand awareness among the general public, which earns it a stronger level of "trade dress" protection for its look and feel. A random new iPhone game with a totally unique idea won't have that same level of protection unless it's an instant, Angry Birds-level hit.

So while it's nice that even a game as simple as Tetris can be successfully defended from outright cloning in a court of law, the news isn't necessarily a beacon of hope to makers of other oft-cloned games.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

I'm with Golgatha. Our copyright laws are completely insane and shaped by the wealthy and large corporations who want to maintain a place of privilege.

Cheap knockoffs like Mino should fail because nobody wants to pay for a slapped together piece of crap, not because a court decides that Tetris is a concept so unique that it deserves protection nearly 30 years after its introduction.

Tetris should be public domain (as should Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, etc.)

Been out for more than 20 years. Should be public domain already in a sane world anyway.

While I agree, that's not really up to the judge in this case to decide. Current copyright duration, nuts as it is, has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Given the restriction that we have to accept that Tetris is under copyright, I think this ruling is a good one. Importantly, it doesn't just help The Tetris Company; it sets a precedent that has the potential to help smaller, less-established game developers who've been copied.

ebbv wrote:

Tetris should be public domain (as should Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, etc.)

That's...a bit of a jump, isn't it? A 28-year-old game versus cartoon characters from the 1920's and 1930's?

Not saying I disagree, but you might want to expand a bit on why you think those things warrant such an immediate comparison.

(For my part, I'd make the argument that 28 years in the software world is easily the equivalent of 80 years in film.)

That's...a bit of a jump, isn't it? A 28-year-old game versus cartoon characters from the 1920's and 1930's?

Not saying I disagree, but you might want to expand a bit on why you think those things warrant such an immediate comparison.

(For my part, I'd make the argument that 28 years in the software world is easily the equivalent of 80 years in film.)

If you know anything about copyright law, you'd know that Mickey Mouse (and Bugs Bunny, etc.) would already be in the public domain but for efforts by the estates and corporations that own the copyrights to extend copyright further and further.

It makes no sense that copyright should last so long, at that the descendants of a creator should continue to benefit and hold exclusive license to something which has long sine entered the public consciousness. Make no mistake, their goal is indefinite copyright.

Imagine a world (movie guy voice not intended) where Shakespeare was still owned under copyright either by an estate or corporation.

It's driven by greed and nothing else. Instead of me justifying why it should enter the public domain, the real onus is why IP should maintain legal protection and tie up court time long after the death of the author/creator?

Been out for more than 20 years. Should be public domain already in a sane world anyway.

While I understand the sentiment, I'm curious what a reasonable time limit would be? I carry at least some sympathy for companies that have worked to create something and want to protect it. How long should they be allowed to do so? At what point is it ok to clone something and should that change as technology continues to improve?

Been out for more than 20 years. Should be public domain already in a sane world anyway.

While I understand the sentiment, I'm curious what a reasonable time limit would be? I carry at least some sympathy for companies that have worked to create something and want to protect it. How long should they be allowed to do so? At what point is it ok to clone something and should that change as technology continues to improve?

The answer is zero. The value in creative works is in the cognitive effort applied to creating works of art, not the results they produce. Copying 1:1 is brain-dead easy, but creating something new is hard. The whole existence of copyright speaks to the faulty thinking that preventing others from copying is they only method to form a business model. The logic is this: I can copy your results, but I can't copy what you don't make. So you leverage your willingness to create, not leveraging a distribution monopoly that is easily bypassed.

Copyright lasts too long and covers too much. It is a natural result of legislatures and courts being full of lawyers who think in terms of all the world being owned by someone while they make their living from both sides in the arguments over who. Our society as a whole is ill served by so many property rights over knowledge which is undiminished in the sharing. We would all be better off with less, less copyright, less patent, less trademark, less trade secret, less lawyers.

No, I don't mean eliminate them entirely as even patents could serve a useful purpose if they were fixed up to properly cover only inventions no one would be able to do had not the inventor shared. Pare the monopolies back to what is really needed so people share inventions instead of maximizing owner profits and lawyer fees like we do now.

While I understand the sentiment, I'm curious what a reasonable time limit would be?

Well, in the US the original duration was 14 years with a one-time extension to 28. I'd argue that we should have a staged copyright system that gradually strips away protections over the duration, with the first loss occurring at the 14 year mark with no option to extend.

While I understand the sentiment, I'm curious what a reasonable time limit would be?

Well, in the US the original duration was 14 years with a one-time extension to 28. I'd argue that we should have a staged copyright system that gradually strips away protections over the duration, with the first loss occurring at the 14 year mark with no option to extend.

I like this plan, especially for software. I've heard it argued that programs themselves shouldn't be copyrighted so much as the way it was created should be. And while I understand very little when it comes to programming, it makes sense that someone can copy my idea in spirit but if my creative use of code is the exact same in someone else's program then I have been wronged. I'm learning alot from these legal battles and still deciding where I sit in the whole debate.

Been out for more than 20 years. Should be public domain already in a sane world anyway.

While I understand the sentiment, I'm curious what a reasonable time limit would be? I carry at least some sympathy for companies that have worked to create something and want to protect it. How long should they be allowed to do so? At what point is it ok to clone something and should that change as technology continues to improve?

A reasonable time limit for most things is 3 years. If you haven't gotten RoI in that amount of time, historical models state and prove that you aren't going to.

Been out for more than 20 years. Should be public domain already in a sane world anyway.

While I understand the sentiment, I'm curious what a reasonable time limit would be? I carry at least some sympathy for companies that have worked to create something and want to protect it. How long should they be allowed to do so? At what point is it ok to clone something and should that change as technology continues to improve?

A reasonable time limit for most things is 3 years. If you haven't gotten RoI in that amount of time, historical models state and prove that you aren't going to.

I'm sorry but how is any amount of years reasonable? As the article states, you can't control a concept or game idea. One would have to directly copy most of the aspects of your game in order to be infringing.

So why on earth should there be a time limit for such a thing?

Its not a patent, anyone can use the same concept, they just can't directly copy almost every aspect of it.

Are there guidelines for how long does it take for something to enter public domain?

Basically anything published prior to 1925 is in the public domain. Now it is purportedly the life of the creator + 75 years (or just 75 years for corporate works) but the way lobbying seems to magically cause extensions to appear every time Disney is about to lose Steamboat Willie, the term is effectively perpetual while being legally limited, thus the Supreme Court is willing to pass on this shit.

"If you know anything about copyright law, you'd know that Mickey Mouse (and Bugs Bunny, etc.) would already be in the public domain but for efforts by the estates and corporations that own the copyrights to extend copyright further and further."

The expiration of the copyright on "Steamboat Willie" allows you to produce derivatives of Steamboat Willie and only "Steamboat Willie."

Eight minutes of silent era sight gags with a synchronized sound track and a thin narrative thread. What are you going to make of that?

Remember that you do not get to use the trademarked character designs for the Mouse, Pete, or Minnie.

"If you know anything about copyright law, you'd know that Mickey Mouse (and Bugs Bunny, etc.) would already be in the public domain but for efforts by the estates and corporations that own the copyrights to extend copyright further and further."

The expiration of the copyright on "Steamboat Willie" allows you to produce derivatives of Steamboat Willie and only "Steamboat Willie."

Eight minutes of silent era sight gags with a synchronized sound track and a thin narrative thread. What are you going to make of that?

Remember that you do not get to use the trademarked character designs for the Mouse, Pete, or Minnie.

No, but you could use the stories, themes, and character personalities from Disney's works.

I used to be a fan of the Tetris games, but the game hasn't improved in the nearly 30 years it's been out. I wouldn't mind a good open source alternative, but they keep getting shut down. And I'm not paying EA for the official one. So, I say let them burn money fighting for it in court. I'll play a different game. Nobody's suing to keep free Sudoku and Mahjong games out of the hands of consumers (yet?).

As for Disney, I don't care about their copyright extensions. Do we want cheap knockoffs of those brands? Besides, the Disney company is still using that stuff. It isn't like it's being abandoned. But a lot of stuff they ripped off, took fairy tales and put their own spin on it. I disagree with them owning any of that stuff except the actual films they put out, though I'm not sure they do. Or did they buy up all the rights wholesale? I love what ABC is doing in "Once Upon a Time" but that's actually Disney (which owns ABC). Cool show, for anyone who grew up with the Disney movies and feels they've outgrown them (most of you, I presume). I'm a dude, almost 33 years old, and it's got me thinking Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, and Grumpy (the dwarf) are pretty cool. That's... something else. Didn't really see that coming.

I used to be a fan of the Tetris games, but the game hasn't improved in the nearly 30 years it's been out. I wouldn't mind a good open source alternative, but they keep getting shut down. And I'm not paying EA for the official one. So, I say let them burn money fighting for it in court. I'll play a different game. Nobody's suing to keep free Sudoku and Mahjong games out of the hands of consumers (yet?).

As for Disney, I don't care about their copyright extensions. Do we want cheap knockoffs of those brands? Besides, the Disney company is still using that stuff. It isn't like it's being abandoned. But a lot of stuff they ripped off, took fairy tales and put their own spin on it. I disagree with them owning any of that stuff except the actual films they put out, though I'm not sure they do. Or did they buy up all the rights wholesale? I love what ABC is doing in "Once Upon a Time" but that's actually Disney (which owns ABC). Cool show, for anyone who grew up with the Disney movies and feels they've outgrown them (most of you, I presume). I'm a dude, almost 33 years old, and it's got me thinking Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, and Grumpy (the dwarf) are pretty cool. That's... something else. Didn't really see that coming.

They would still have the trademarks. Nobody can clone Mickey wholesale, but they can use non-trademarked portions for derivative works.

Generic copyright should be 20 years max, 10-15 for software, and this is probably controversial, but specific characters should still be 65-100 years.

I understand that people want to create in an existing universe that they find interesting, but I don't want people using characters that exist without consent of the content creator. I don't want Mickey Mouse in the public domain. However, I don't see how creating a unique character in a universe that exists (lets use star wars) that has nothing to do with the original story can harm the original content creator. Any joe shmoe after 20 years should be able to use the existing universe to create additional stories in that world. This only works to ADD value to the original created universe, rather than reducing the value. If someone uses the star wars universe and creates something that doesn't correctly portray the universe, it won't be seen as canon and fans of the original series will reject it. Conversely, if they make changes that improve the universe, great!

There are hundreds of stories that have been created in the star wars universe that were awesome, and the creators should have been able to profit from these stories. Its wrong that these new content creators can't use an existing context to create new stories. This is why I think so many people use the bible as background for so many current stories, because it's the most familiar public domain universe and context that exists in america.

Edit: Forgot to say the reason why I think characters should stay in copyright for so long is because you can do real damage to existing works that are still profitable by changing stories of characters more than changing "universe". George Lucas did more damage to star wars with the Prequels with baby darth vader than anyone else who wrote fan-fiction about some new jedi.

As it relates to Games, specifics are important. Width and height of the board in Tetris is very very important to how the game plays. The amount of time and control Mario spends in the air is essential to what a mario game is. I guess it can be difficult to define what a game's "character" is for things like Bejeweled, but I think that the feel and character of the game must be different enough, and if it is, I don't see a problem with aspects of other games being copied. The character of each game will be judged on its own merits, and some will be better than others, and they will be rewarded for it.

If I create a character or setting, I do want protection on that, and I should be able to keep it for some length of time.

People shouldn't be able to make their own Mickey Mouse cartoons, write their own Discworld book(picking something that's been around a while), or something else along those lines. Sure, there's fanfic, and that's fine, but I don't want to see that on the store shelves. At some point, it should go out into public domain, but if the author is still doing something with the characters/setting, then they should be allowed to control what becomes of those characters or what happens in their "world".

Software isn't as simple. You shouldn't be able to just copy Tetris, but you shouldn't be able to restrict people from making a game where blocks fall from the ceiling (which fortunately didn't happen). Sadly, you can still prevent people from making a rectangle...

There's plenty of room to make the system better, but I don't agree with just scrapping the whole thing.

People shouldn't be able to make their own Mickey Mouse cartoons, write their own Discworld book(picking something that's been around a while), or something else along those lines. Sure, there's fanfic, and that's fine, but I don't want to see that on the store shelves. At some point, it should go out into public domain, but if the author is still doing something with the characters/setting, then they should be allowed to control what becomes of those characters or what happens in their "world".There's plenty of room to make the system better, but I don't agree with just scrapping the whole thing.

Define "author." Walt's dead. The Walt Disney Corporation is immortal (in theory). So assuming they are still doing anything with the characters, using new authors, those characters should never enter the public domain?

Does anybody else think that Tetris should be public domain if for no other reason than Alexei Pajetnov doesn't even get any royalties anyway? I mean, talk about the guy being royally (heh...) screwed because he was born in a terrible country for entrepreneurs...

If I create a character or setting, I do want protection on that, and I should be able to keep it for some length of time.

People shouldn't be able to make their own Mickey Mouse cartoons, write their own Discworld book(picking something that's been around a while), or something else along those lines. Sure, there's fanfic, and that's fine, but I don't want to see that on the store shelves. At some point, it should go out into public domain, but if the author is still doing something with the characters/setting, then they should be allowed to control what becomes of those characters or what happens in their "world".

Software isn't as simple. You shouldn't be able to just copy Tetris, but you shouldn't be able to restrict people from making a game where blocks fall from the ceiling (which fortunately didn't happen). Sadly, you can still prevent people from making a rectangle...

There's plenty of room to make the system better, but I don't agree with just scrapping the whole thing.

If anything should be more apparent than anything else is that copyright protects nothing. The only way to protect your business is to leverage the value of the time and effort you put in to creating. Most of what you're talking about is what you want, which is not what copyright is supposed to be about. It's meant for the good of society, not just those that stand to gain financially from it. What should happen is what is good for everyone and that is no copyright at all, because that gives everyone the freedom to expand upon and transform existing works into something more than it was. I could care less if it makes the content business harder or non-existent because people will keep on creating regardless of whether there's money in it or not. And that's the point of copyright, to encourage more art. However, it doesn't. It encourages censorship for the ability to form monopolies that actually reduce the amount of access to content, which is contrary to the goals enumerated in the constitution.

Take Germany for example. Germany is known for their highly skilled engineers. The reason they are regarded as such is because during the industrial revolution, Germany had no copyright (except for Prussia, but it was largely ignored by the people and unenforceable). As such, anybody could make copies of academic text books, some of which were engineering text books, for only the price of printing. The free and unfettered access to academic knowledge gave Germany an edge in engineering, which is why the world superpowers grabbed as many of them as they could after the fallout of WWII. Those same engineers are the ones that helped America get in space and got us to the moon. A lot of our technological advances are due in part to Germans having no copyright. The lack of copyright actually helped advance Germany (by extension, the rest of us) and they actually produced more content in contrast to England, which had established a copyright law since the Statute of Anne.

This whole idea of copyright stems from the assumption that knowledge and art are property of the author that created it. This is far from reality however, because such property "an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it." What's more, everything is derivative of everything else. Your "property" is built from the "property" of every author that came before you, thus you are appropriating their "property" and calling the new work your "property". To follow this line of logic, in your pursuit to claim ownership of your works, you also claim ownership of their works as well. By your action of protecting your "property", you're violating the "property" of others. A bit of an irrational standard, don't you think? It's like trying to own the air you breath, more or less. It's only yours so long as you keep it to yourself.

Sure, without copyright, people will copy you, but they can only copy what you create. If all they can do is copy, then without you, they don't exist. Which means that you have the power to choose to create and that choice is contingent on whether you are fairly compensated, or contractually secured compensation, before you even begin to create anything. Nobody can make you work for free, with or without copyright. You just have to figure out if you're selling content, or your labor and which one you have control over in the absence of copyright laws.

Does anybody else think that Tetris should be public domain if for no other reason than Alexei Pajetnov doesn't even get any royalties anyway? I mean, talk about the guy being royally (heh...) screwed because he was born in a terrible country for entrepreneurs...

Actually Alexei does get the royalties. He's a partner of the Tetris Company with Henk Rogers (who visited Russia to get the rights for Tetris for the original Gameboy).

Been out for more than 20 years. Should be public domain already in a sane world anyway.

While I understand the sentiment, I'm curious what a reasonable time limit would be? I carry at least some sympathy for companies that have worked to create something and want to protect it. How long should they be allowed to do so? At what point is it ok to clone something and should that change as technology continues to improve?

I think that the "as technology changes" bit of your question is very interesting. The terms were 14+14 years in the U.S. originally. However we live in a much faster moving world now, in which most works loose their economic value far more quickly. Terms should be shortening to account for this, but they just keep getting longer.

In any case just what the appropriate term is should be determined on the basis of purely practical considerations. Talking about this stuff in terms of "property rights" and trying to argue on principle is just dumb. Copyright was invented to encourage writers etc. to broadly disseminate their works, not to legally enshrine some supposed natural right, so lets not talk about what's "OK" but instead about what "works best". From this standpoint it is perfectly clear that policy makers should actually be crunching some numbers to work out what impact different lengths would have on the production of creative works, as well as what the other economic impacts might be. Do the sums, and the copyright term with the greatest benefit minus cost is your "reasonable time limit". We need to be careful to include ALL the impacts here. E.g. a student not being able to access books and articles when studying exerts a very real economic cost when that student enters the work force.

My guess (just a guess) is that the vast majority of producers of creative works these days make their money over a VERY short time period (as in months, not years), so they would be minimally impacted by reducing terms to a few years. I also suspect that the costs associated with copyright kind of work the opposite way, exerting a slow drain over many years as people are unable to access or draw upon significant and historical works years after publication. If this is in fact the case (and as I said policy makes should crunch the numbers, not rely on my hunches) then terms of just a few years would likely produce the greatest net benefit (as in total benefits minus total costs).

The real problem here is that no one seems interested in sitting down and doing the sums to work out what the optimal length to achieve the outcomes that we want actually is. No doubt this is for the usual reason: because certain powerful vested interests who have a financial interest in achieving outcomes which are contrary to the public interest (here Disney et al) have the politicians in their pockets (through the threat of withdrawing campaign donations) and can get whatever policy outcomes they damn well want, regardless of the effects of this on the broader economy or the general public.

I understand that people want to create in an existing universe that they find interesting, but I don't want people using characters that exist without consent of the content creator. I don't want Mickey Mouse in the public domain. However, I don't see how creating a unique character in a universe that exists (lets use star wars) that has nothing to do with the original story can harm the original content creator. Any joe shmoe after 20 years should be able to use the existing universe to create additional stories in that world. This only works to ADD value to the original created universe, rather than reducing the value. If someone uses the star wars universe and creates something that doesn't correctly portray the universe, it won't be seen as canon and fans of the original series will reject it. Conversely, if they make changes that improve the universe, great!

That's just an impractical idea. For one, creating new stories in a known universe opens up issues for the original creator. If I wrote a story set in a popular TV show's universe, then next year an episode comes out which is very similar to mine, we're right into lawsuit territory. And that's not just an hypothetical: an episode of Babylon 5 had to be postponed because a fan had posted a similar story to the Usenet fan group while the episode was in development. Not enforcing copyright means the original creator gets screwed if they ever continue the universe, because someone else might have the same idea.

This is exactly why we need copyright laws. These are out there to protect the creators of fiction, non-fiction and any other form of creative outlet from having their work bent to someone else's will in ways the creators or the licence holders never intended. Fan fiction usually gets a pass becasue it's intention is to add their spin on the story without trying to cash in on it on a massive scale. It is when someone tries to rip off an idea wholesale as their own with very few changes, and there have been cases that have cropped up over the years besides the whole Tetris thing like the big to-do that Capcom had with Data East over how Fighter's History looked like Street Fighter 2... and lost. For something like this to stick, there has to be some sort of proof that it was a deliberate attempt to copy the game. Why Capcom lost was that Data East was able to prove that they had originated the one-on-one genre and that the the format was one that was expected for this kind of game.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighter%27s_History).

The difference between the Tetris thing and Capcom's beef is that the creators of the Tetris knockoff failed to show that there was any significant difference from the original Tetris. In fact, the picture that was used for this article is proof that verry little effort was put into turning into something other thatn a straight up clone. They had powerups, but the concept was done on other tetris games over the years.

This is exactly why we need copyright laws. These are out there to protect the creators of fiction, non-fiction and any other form of creative outlet from having their work bent to someone else's will in ways the creators or the licence holders never intended.

No, they're not. Copyright is not meant to "protect" artists and authors, it's meant to encourage greater access to more and more works through incentives such as an exclusive, but temporary, opportunity to profit from them. It is also not meant to give authors the power to prevent transformative works that displeases them. If they don't like how people make use of their works, that's tough noogies. Particularly where fair use is concerned. Authors don't get to say, "You can't do that, because I don't like it". Parody, commentary, education, and review are all perfectly permissible uses that might find disfavor with an author, but he has no right to block it.

Take Germany for example. Germany is known for their highly skilled engineers. The reason they are regarded as such is because during the industrial revolution, Germany had no copyright (except for Prussia, but it was largely ignored by the people and unenforceable).

Too bad for your argument that German engineers were mostly known as copy-cats during the industrial revolution, and not as innovative at all until after the German Patent Act was adopted in 1877.